Summary

Over the past 5 years, a novel U.S. Army program has deployed soldier-scientists in 10 Afghan provinces as part of a counterinsurgency strategy to stem reliance on the Taliban. The program has spent $42 million on more than 680 projects, such as coring trees for climate records, shifting farmers from growing poppy for opium, and assessing the Taliban's potential to generate income from mining in their strongholds.